01/02/09 Polar ice melt

Recent satellite data show that 2 trillion tons of land ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted since 2003, indicating yet again what scientists say is global warming. NASA geophysicist Scott Luthcke says that the water melting from Greenland in the past five years would fill up about 11 Chesapeake Bays and the Greenland melt seems to be accelerating. Even though melting polar caps are a long distance from Idaho, ag producers here have plenty of reason to be concerned according to Ron Abramovich, an official with the USDA's Natural Resources Conservation Service, who notes that melting ice enters the sea. " You add a lot more cold fresh water into the system, changes are bound to happen. What we've seen since 1977 is a change in the system. So the weather is more volatile than it used to be. Warmer summers, we can't count on that normal snow pack like we used to have when we were younger and growing up. The past decade the snow has not remained in the mountains as long so we're seeing lower flows in the later summer months and increased flows in March. There's not any more water up there after our snow season ends, basically." Abramovich notes that changes in the snowpack and snowmelt bring changes in dams and reservoirs which affects irrigation. These are all factors that Idaho's farmers need to bear in mind as they plan for the future. We can count on the spring rains but if they don't materialize, then once we get into the summer months, we don't get enough precip during the summer to make up the difference of a lack of winter snowfall.